One of the hardest aspects of training clients online is holding them accountable to their workouts and motivating them from afar.

With in-person training, this can even sometimes be a struggle, even when you are seeing your clients face-to-face! The way I look at it with my in-person clients, is that I have a one hour session with them to get in their head, try to connect with them, and figure them out, so I can figure out which of my motivation techniques to use on them. (I have a whole bag of tricks!)

Finding a Way to Increase Client Accountability

One thing I have found for my in-person training clients is that providing them with a schedule is a key ingredient to their success.

For example, you can increase client accountability by setting their training appointments weeks in advance, scheduling progress checks, and checking in on their short- and long-term goals so that they know what they need to do.

Now, why not use this same technique with online training clients?

You will have clients of all different levels of motivation–some are very motivated and just need structure; some lack motivation and are looking for you to do everything for them, aside from actually doing the exercises. You will discover this very soon during the online training process, but no matter how much personal motivation your client has, your job is to provide not only workouts, but when to do the workouts, when to recover, when to expect progress, and when to check in on progress, etc.

Let’s look at this this way. If someone signs up for online personal training with you, clearly they have a goal and at least enough motivation to make the step to sign up; however, they either need more motivation, education on how to reach their goal, or just someone to hold them accountable to their goal.

This is where the Trainerize schedule comes in to play:

Trainerize gives you the ability to add clients’ workouts to their training schedule, add progress check reminders to upload new pictures and/or measurements, and also provides the client with notifications.

This will take the guess work out of what they are supposed to be doing each day and allows us– the trainers–to make sure they are doing what needs to be done. Trainerize will send you regular weekly emails displaying a summary of who completed their workouts, and who has missed them. If a workout wasn’t scheduled, we wouldn’t know if it was missed. I make sure to tell my clients that I receive these emails, and make sure to message them to see what’s up if they miss a workout.

Sometimes just knowing that I am going to check in on them, and the guilt they will feel if they have to explain why they missed a workout will be enough to get them off their butts to get it done!

This is something to think about when looking at how to keep clients long term, or how to motivate them from a far. You just have to learn how to optimize all the features that Trainerize offers us to get our clients great results. Great results from clients means better progress pictures and word of mouth marketing, meaning more money for you!

Michelle is the resident fitness expert for Trainerize. She has 8 years’ experience in the fitness industry training clients through her own business including: professional and elite level athletes, celebrities, online clients, and average people with fitness and fat loss goals, to name a few. She holds a bachelor's degree in Kinesiology, is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA) and a certified level 1 Nutrition Coach. Michelle wakes up happy every day because she is able to do what she loves for a living.
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